News

This year’s best technical papers for web coating and vacuum web coating were honored last night at the 2018 AIMCAL R2R Conference USA, held at the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass Resort in Chandler (Phoenix), AZ. The four-day program drew nearly 300 attendees from across the globe to hear almost 100 technical presentations on solution, extrusion and vacuum coating, as well as web handling. The event was once again held in conjunction with the Society of Plastics Engineers’ annual FlexPackCon technical conference, with collaboration from the Flexible Packaging Assn.

The annual John Matteucci Award winners were:

1. Technical Excellence Award for Best Vacuum Coating Paper: Todd Fayne of Pepsico for "Barrier by Design: Food Packaging Through Materials Selection." Honorable Mention for Best Paper: Aliaksandr Zaretski, Ph.D., of GrollTex, Inc., for "Scaling Production of 2D Materials to Industrially Meaningful Levels and Costs." Honorable Mention for Best Paper: Hazel Assender of University of Oxford for "The Role of Nanodefects in Gas Barrier Layers.”

1. Technical Excellence Award for Best Web Coating Paper: Martti Toivakka of Abo Akademi University for “Slot-Die Coating of Nanocellulose for Barrier Applications." Honorable Mention for Best Paper: Lee Runyon of Carestream for “CFD Modeling: Key Fields and Numerical Methods to Understand Before Starting Hopper Modeling." Honorable Mention for Best Paper: Bill Smith of Polytype Converting GmbH for “Electrostatic Reduction of Misting in Roll Coating."

The 2019 AIMCAL R2R Conference USA will be held Oct. 6-9, 2019, in Myrtle Beach, SC.